NAME

grotty - groff driver for typewriter-like devices

SYNOPSIS

grotty [ -bBcdfhioruUv ] [ -Fdir ] [ files... ]
It is possible to have whitespace between the -F option and its
parameter.

DESCRIPTION

grotty translates the output of GNU troff into a form suitable for
typewriter-like devices. Normally grotty should be invoked by using
the groff command with a -Tascii, -Tlatin1 or -Tutf8 option on ASCII
based systems, and with -Tcp1047 and -Tutf8 on EBCDIC based hosts. If
no files are given, grotty reads the standard input. A filename of -
also causes grotty to read the standard input. Output is written to
the standard output.
By default, grotty emits SGR escape sequences (from ISO 6429, also
called ANSI color escapes) to change text attributes (bold, italic,
colors). This makes it possible to have eight different background and
foreground colors; additionally, bold and italic attributes can be used
atthesametime (by using the BI font).
The following colors are defined in tty.tmac: black, white, red, green,
blue, yellow, magenta, cyan. Unknown colors are mapped to the default
color (which is dependent on the settings of the terminal; in most
cases, this is black for the foreground and white for the background).
Use the -c switch to revert to the old behaviour, printing a bold
character c with the sequence `c BACKSPACE c' and an italic character c
by the sequence `_ BACKSPACE c'. At the same time, color output is
disabled. The same effect can be achieved by setting either the
GROFF_NO_SGR environment variable or using the ‘sgr’ X command (see
below).
For SGR support, it is necessary to use the -R option of less(1) to
disable the interpretation of grotty's old output format.
Consequently, all programs which use less as the pager program have to
pass this option to it. For man(1) in particular, either add -R to the
$PAGER environment variable, e.g.
PAGER="/usr/bin/less-R"exportPAGER
or use the -P option of man to set the pager executable and its
options, or modify the configuration file of man in a similar fashion.
Note that with some man(1) versions, you have to use the $MANPAGER
environment variable instead.
grotty's old output format can be displayed on a terminal by piping
through ul(1). Pagers such as more(1) or less(1) are also able to
display these sequences. Use either -B or -U when piping into less(1);
use -b when piping into more(1). There is no need to filter the output
through col(1) since grotty never outputs reverse line feeds.
The font description file may contain a command
internalnamen
where n is a decimal integer. If the 01 bit in n is set, then the font
is treated as an italic font; if the 02 bit is set, then it is treated
as a bold font. The code field in the font description field gives the
code which is used to output the character. This code can also be used
in the \N escape sequence in troff.
If the DESC file contains the keyword unicode, grotty emits Unicode
characters in UTF-8 encoding. Otherwise, it emits characters in a
single-byte encoding depending on the data in the font description
files. See the groff_font(5) man page for more details.

OPTIONS

-b Suppress the use of overstriking for bold characters. Ignored
if -c isn't used.
-B Use only overstriking for bold-italic characters. Ignored if -c
isn't used.
-c Use grotty's old output format (see above). This also disables
color output.
-d Ignore all \D commands. Without this grotty renders \D'l...'
commands that have at least one zero argument (and so are either
horizontal or vertical) using -, |, and + characters. In a
similar way, grotty handles \D'p...' commands which consist
entirely of horizontal and vertical lines.
-f Use form feeds in the output. A form feed is output at the end
of each page that has no output on its last line.
-Fdir Prepend directory dir/devname to the search path for font and
device description files; name is the name of the device,
usually ascii, latin1, utf8, or cp1047.
-h Use horizontal tabs in the output. Tabs are assumed to be set
every 8 columns.
-i Use escape sequences to set the italic text attribute instead of
the underline attribute for italic fonts (‘I’ and ‘BI’). Note
that most terminals (including xterm) don't support this.
Ignored if -c is active.
-o Suppress overstriking (other than for bold or underlined
characters in case the old output format has been activated with
-c).
-r Use escape sequences to set the reverse text attribute instead
of the underline attribute for italic fonts (‘I’ and ‘BI’).
Ignored if -c is active.
-u Suppress the use of underlining for italic characters. Ignored
if -c isn't used.
-U Use only underlining for bold-italic characters. Ignored if -c
isn't used.
-v Print the version number.

USAGE

grotty understands a single X command produced using the \X escape
sequence.
\X'tty:sgrn'
If n is non-zero or missing, enable SGR output (this is the
default), otherwise use the old drawing scheme for bold and
underline.

ENVIRONMENT

GROFF_NO_SGR
If set, the old drawing scheme for bold and underline (using the
backspace character) is active. Colors are disabled.
GROFF_FONT_PATH
A list of directories in which to search for the devname
directory in addition to the default ones. See troff(1) and
groff_font(5) for more details.

BUGS

grotty is intended only for simple documents.
There is no support for fractional horizontal or vertical motions.
There is no support for \D commands other than horizontal and vertical
lines.
Characters above the first line (i.e. with a vertical position of 0)
cannot be printed.
Color handling is different compared to grops(1). \M doesn't set the
fill color for closed graphic objects (which grotty doesn't support
anyway) but changes the background color of the character cell,
affecting all subsequent operations.